Korean athletes vie for more medals at Paris Olympics

With the 2024 Paris Olympics reaching its halfway point, the Korean team's medal race continues in the latter half of the competition. Korea has already surpassed its target of five gold medals, achieving 10 golds as of Sunday. The team is now determined to exceed the record of thirteen gold medals set at the 2012 London Olympics.

The highly anticipated national martial art Taekwondo events will begin on Wednesday, taking place at the Grand Palais, where the fencing competition was held. After failing to secure a gold medal at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics (finishing with one silver and two bronze medals), Korean Taekwondo athletes are eager to reclaim their dominance. Paris holds historical significance for Taekwondo, as it was here in 1994 that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) adopted Taekwondo as an official Olympic event. Park Tae-jun (20), competing in the men’s 58-kg class on the first day, is seen as a strong gold medal contender.

Women's golf and weightlifting also commence their competitions on the same day. The Korean women's golf team, featuring world No. 3 Ko Jin-young (29), No. 4 Yang Hee-young (35), and No. 12 Kim Hyo-joo (29), aims to secure a gold medal for the first time since Park In-bee’s (36) victory at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics. The team has been training at Le Golf National in Guyancourt, near Paris, and is hopeful of achieving multiple medals. Their main competitor is Nelly Korda (26, USA), the gold medalist from the 2021 Tokyo Olympics and current world No. 1.

In weightlifting, the focus is on Park Hye-jeong (21), the ‘post Jang Mi-ran’ athlete competing in the women’s superheavyweight division (over 87 kilograms) on Sunday, the last day of the competition. Park won gold medals in this weight class at the World Championships and the Hangzhou Asian Games last year. Her challenge will be to surpass China’s Li Wenwen (24), the Tokyo Games winner and current world record holder in this weight class (total of 335 kilograms). Park’s personal best total is 296 kilograms.


Hong-Gu Kang windup@donga.com